Anxious wait for families who don’t know the fate of loved ones

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It has been four days since Yahali Ricardo had any news of her younger sister’s whereabouts, and the silence is deafening.

Ricardo’s bright and vivacious 26-year-old sibling Oriya was among young Israelis dancing to the sunrise at a music festival near Gaza when Hamas militants stormed the site on Saturday.

Yahali (left) and Oriya Ricardo, who is missing.

Hundreds of bodies massacred by Hamas militants have since been recovered from the field near Kibbutz Re’im, while harrowing videos of other revellers kidnapped and taken to Gaza have been beamed around the world.

Oriya has not been identified in either group, fuelling an agonising wait for a family desperate for answers.

Oriya Ricardo was not identified among the bodies at the music festival, but her location is not known. Credit:

“I don’t know what is worse – if she is dead or if she is alive because they have got her,” Ricardo said.

She is just one of the many Israelis at home and abroad fearing the worst about the fate of loved ones missing since the co-ordinated attack that caught Israel off guard.

In an extraordinary escalation of violence, Hamas has threatened to broadcast the execution of hostages for every civilian target Israel bombs without warning.

Israel launched a “complete siege” of the troubled Gaza enclave on Tuesday – cutting food, electricity and water – and Ricardo feared what that means for at least 130 hostages being held in Gaza, her sister potentially among them.

“They are cutting water, electricity, [and] I understand why. But what if my sister is there? What if she’s wounded? What if she needs water?”

The last contact Ricardo had with Oriya was on Saturday morning when she woke to the sound of sirens over Tel Aviv signalling the arrival of the deadliest attack on Israel since its founding.

“I’ve never felt so pointless in my whole life. What is the point of being a big sister if I cannot protect my sister?”

“It’s a ritual for my sister and I that we speak every morning and I hadn’t heard from her,” Ricardo said.

“I messaged, ‘Where are you?’ She replied, ‘They’re shooting at us. My friend died in my arms.’ She just kept saying that her friend died in her arms.”

Soon after, Ricardo received a distressing, bloodied image of Oriya’s friend, before a final message at 8.28am. “She said, ‘I love you’… and then she went silent.”

For the past four days, Ricardo and her family have searched every hospital, every victim list, in search of Oriya. At one makeshift morgue in a defence base where she was denied entry, Ricardo said she saw “eight more trucks of bodies” arrive that were yet to be identified.

“They took our DNA, but it’s been more than three days. I’m furious. I’ve never felt so pointless in my whole life. What is the point of being a big sister if I cannot protect my sister?” she said.

“Nobody has contacted us. They cannot give information because everything that they put out in public, the terrorists use for disinformation. It’s tearing me apart, but I understand why.”

Adi Kaploun’s whereabouts are unknown after she was abducted.Credit:

A little more than 50 kilometres from the music festival site, the village of Kibbutz Holit also fell victim to Hamas terror at the weekend, with armed men spraying bullets into the homes of civilians and kidnapping others.

Among those abducted were Adi Kaploun, the daughter-in-law of Australian man Yonadav Kaploun, and her sons – aged four and four months.

While the two young boys have since been accounted for with serious injuries, their mother’s whereabouts is unknown, but she is believed to have been kidnapped.

Born and raised in Melbourne, Kaploun, who is in Israel, was too distressed to speak about the recent events. However, family friend Moses Ben-Giat spoke on their behalf, describing “50 trucks, fully loaded with fully armed Hamas terrorists” that stormed the kibbutz on Saturday.

He said the village never stood a chance. “They were defenseless women and children. [Hamas] executed one house after another. They took some, they killed some and very few were left,” Ben-Giat said.

One of the first homes militants struck was that of Yonadav Kaploun’s younger son, where they killed his girlfriend in her bed. Neither of Yonadav’s sons was in the kibbutz at the time.

With Hamas insurgents moving from house to house, Adi tried to hide with her sons but her front door was soon blown open, and the three were kidnapped.

The boys were then separated from their mother and marched through the village with another neighbour, Avital Aladjem. All three were used by militants as “human shields” while they fired into homes, Ben-Giat said. Adi has not been seen since.

After briefly crossing into Gaza, Aladjem and the two boys escaped and have since returned to safety and critical medical care in Israel.

“The four-year-old boy was shot in the leg, which crushed his right foot. He was operated on, on Sunday,” Ben-Giat said.

“The baby had so much gunpowder in his lungs and smoke … that it caused damage to his right lung.”

Now, the family waits in anguish for news of the young mother. “Survival mode,” Ben-Giat said.

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